GUIDELINES FOR PRACTICE

Hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus and other blood-borne infections in healthcare workers: guidelines for prevention and management in industrialised countries

D FitzSimons¹, G François², G De Carli³, D Shouval⁴, A Prüss-Üstün⁵, V Puro³, I Williams⁶, D Lavanchy⁷, A De Schryver⁸, A Kopka⁹, F Ncube¹⁰, G Ippolito³, P Van Damme²

¹ World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
² Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board, WHO Collaborating Centre for Prevention and Control of Viral Hepatitis, Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
³ Department of Epidemiology, Istituto Nazionale per le Malattie Infettive IRCCS ‘Lazzaro Spallanzani’, Rome, Italy
⁴ Liver Unit, Hadassah-Hebrew University Hospital, University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
⁵ Protection of the Human Environment, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
⁶ Division of Viral Hepatitis, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
⁷ Global Alert and Response, Department of Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Response, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
⁸ IDEWE Occupational Health Services, Leuven, Belgium
⁹ Department of Anaesthesia, Southern General Hospital, Glasgow, UK
¹⁰ HIV/STI Department, Health Protection Agency (HPA), Centre for Infection, London, UK

Correspondence to:
Dr G François, Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1, BE-2610 Antwerp, Belgium; guido.francois{at}ua.ac.be

The Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board (VHPB) convened a meeting of international experts from the public and private sectors in order to review and evaluate the epidemiology of blood-borne infections in healthcare workers, to evaluate the transmission of hepatitis B and C viruses as an occupational risk, to discuss primary and secondary prevention measures and to review recommendations for infected healthcare workers and (para)medical students. This VHPB meeting outlined a number of recommendations for the prevention and control of viral hepatitis in the following domains: application of standard precautions, panels for counselling infected healthcare workers and patients, hepatitis B vaccination, restrictions on the practice of exposure-prone procedures by infected healthcare workers, ethical and legal issues, assessment of risk and costs, priority setting by individual countries and the role of the VHPB. Participants also identified a number of terms that need harmonisation or standardisation in order to facilitate communication between experts.

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